1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a nonaqueous electrolyte battery and, more specifically, to a nonaqueous electrolyte battery having an improved negative electrode active material.
2. Description of the Background
Nonaqueous electrolyte secondary batteries using, as a negative electrode active material, metallic lithium, a lithium alloy, a lithium compound, a carbon material, or the like are anticipated to become good high energy density batteries and are now researched and developed extensively. So far, a wide variety of lithium ion batteries that use LiCoO2, LiMn2O4, or the like as a positive electrode material and a carbon material capable of inserting and de-inserting lithium as a negative electrode active material have been put into practical use.
On the other hand, although secondary batteries using, as a negative electrode active material, metallic lithium, a lithium alloy, a lithium compound are anticipated to exhibit a large capacity, they have not been put into practical use yet for the following main reasons. The use of metallic lithium is associated with problems that lithium deteriorates owing to reaction between a nonaqueous electrolyte liquid and metallic lithium and that desorption of the negative electrode active material that is caused by dendrite-like (bark-like) lithium produced by repetition of charging and discharging causes internal short circuiting or shortens the cycle life. To solve these problems, studies have been made in which a lithium alloy or a lithium compound is used as a negative electrode. However, in particular, in the case of using an alloy such as a lithium-aluminum alloy, although the charging/discharging efficiency is increased by virtue of reduction in the degree of reaction between the negative electrode active material and the nonaqueous electrolyte liquid, improvement in cycle life characteristic is insufficient because repetition of deep charging and discharging causes pulverization of the electrode.
From the viewpoint of increasing the negative electrode capacity, it has been proposed to use a chalcogen compound such as an oxide as a negative electrode active material. For example, it has been proposed to improve the cycle life characteristic by using SnO or SnO2 (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Numbers Hei. 7-122274 and Hei. 7-235293) or an amorphous oxide such as SnSiO3 or SnSi1-xPxO3. However, even the use of those chalcogen compounds has not yet improved or increased the cycle life and the capacity sufficiently. A need, therefore, continues to exist for a nonaqueous electrolyte battery which is not burdened by these problems.